So back to business as usual then.
This is an ex LMS 12 ton traction truck which has recently been released by 247 Developments. The kit is a 3d print which is supplied as a body with solebars, W irons, brake gear and white metal buffers. The body was a little bit distorted (kinda like a spoon shape) but popping it in very hot water and weighting it while it cooled seemed to take most of the distortion out. The back of the frames needed thinning for p4 wheels to fit (I believe the kit has been changed to rectify this now). I replaced the sides with microstrip as they were a little uneven and added the safety loops and tie down shackles that were missing from the print. The supplied buffers were a little odd so these are Accurascale ones. Just need to do a load for it now.
On Brettell Road I have mostly used cast white metal vacuum pipes. Generally these have been fine but I have had some of the bufferbeam mounted ones break as they are slightly vulnerable. David Roome has now produced some 3d printed ones that are rubbery and a lot less susceptible to knocks. Im not replacing them on all of my wagons just as and when a white metal one gets broken.
Links
In just under a months time Brettell Road will make its return to the exhibition world with a local visit to the 
Pony truck axlebox and springs along with some of the under cab pipework. One of the small AWS cylinders can be seen on the footplate
The last backscene is now in place so the road in the middle of the layout now gives the impression it goes somewhere. The Leyland Steer seems to have lost its licence plate somewhere.
The little back yard on board 2 is done – I wanted a used but not particularly looked after feel.
I realised I’ve not actually taken any images of this building in its finished state before now.
Princess Margaret heads back to the Wallows for the evening.
GWR railcar catches the last of the sun as it heads off to Dudley.
My Back scenes have been printed onto self adhesive vinyl and most of them mounted to the boards. Just the last one still to do. I used a local company who kindly did a couple of test prints so i could tweak the colours. Anyone local to Stourbridge area who are after something similar I can highly recommend them – 
Above is the basic drawing of a typical industrial shed. Think of it like a kit of parts. This is done in Adobe Illustrator and the rather bright colours are simply so that they are easily selectable at the next stage.
Which is to transfer the basic drawing to Photoshop where Scalescenes textures are overlaid and the bits ‘assembled’ into something resembling a basic 3d building. You will note theres no shading and no perspective yet. 
A different building showing some shading and some perspective. The image is still made up of separate parts in a folder so that I can fine tune it once applied to the finished backscene.
Of which this is the end board for the left of the layout. Some consideration, such as the metal fence, needs to be made for elements of the layout that will cross from the 3d world to the 2d one. The line the railway takes, under the bridge on the left is hinted at by the arrangement of the trees.
This is the view of the bottom of the hill on the left. Again the wall and the building on the right of the image are intended to match up with the 3d model.
And finally the middle bit of the 2 new boards. Based on images of the real Round Oak. Of course the point of all this is that its there but not really all that noticeable at the same time.
Ive mentioned before that enlarging Brettell Road would mean I need to build new fiddleyards. The reason for this is the way the cassette system worked was to have a recess in the board which given that the layout is now 2 tracks meant the old ones couldn’t really be made to fit. I also took the opportunity to make some improvements and the result can be seen above.
View from the front. I decided that the Round Oak industrials running on the mainline was a no-no, so now they will appear from the right of the layout behind the warehouse. As the mainline drops away this means that i needed a different level for this bit.
Pictured are the loco and unit versions. The base is 9mm MDF this time.
The little bits on the inner ends are for rudimentary buffer stops. This stops the trains running off the end but also adds a little security when lifting the cassettes so that nothing rolls off.
The way they connect is a tweak on my original design of using a bit of flat bottom rail on its side – positioned in the web of the running rail for alignment and electrical connection. Originally these were both sides and the rails on the cassettes were angled outwards a little for a good fit. Making the loco cassettes reversible main this wouldn’t work and so a small bit of 0.6 straight wire is soldered to the inside of the web to help with alignment.
Taking a hint from Amlwch (a layout i used to help out with) I decided to make the storage of the cassettes integrated with the fiddleyards. This one will store the locos and units, the other one the long cassettes. Most of the braces slot in place meaning I can lock in place 8 unit cassettes with just 3 bolts and 16 loco cassettes with just 2. The less time spent faffing about at an exhibition the better!
I wasn’t expecting to find a lever frame but there is one. Its located on the third floor which is used for training.
The fourth floor is a gigantic relay room. It still had that lovely electrical machines smell.
These are called K packs and each one controls 1 thing outside in the station. Theres no plug in a laptop and diagnose a problem with these things. If something goes wrong an engineer would need to use their knowledge of which pack is causing the problem, lift it out and use and the paper schematics that are kept on the same floor to fix it. All under the pressure of something on the station being shut down and the general (organised) chaos that would ensue. We were told that some of these pack have never been touched since the day they were installed. About 60 years of reliable service!
The view from the fifth (top) floor window. The Building directly ahead is about the only thing thats unchanged since my version of New Street set in the late 80’s. The blue building stands where the original lamp block stood and is still called that.
Finally the panel. Who knows how many millions of movements were controlled by this in its lifetime? All the platforms are bi-directional and all worked via permissive block working. Everything being safety netted by the relay room downstairs. We were told it would take a signaller 6 months to become proficient in using the panel although there was one guy who learnt it in 8 weeks.